Delegating

“The best way to ensure that something is done correctly is to do it myself.”  OK, raise your hand if you have heard someone say this.  Great, now keep your hand up if you have used this line before, and be honest.  As someone who has worked with teams, been a team member and a manager, I will admit to raising my hand for both of those questions.  There were many times earlier in my career where grabbing the task and putting together the action items were a choice.  I had yet to learn that by doing this I was minimizing the person I was grabbing from, putting myself in a position where I now was responsible, and most importantly, removed a learning opportunity to help better someone in terms of educating them and improving their skill sets. 

If I am a one-man shop, it is natural to take on all of the responsibilities, action all items and provide all of the feedback.  The “buck” has nowhere else to stop at.  When we are young, we learn that it is our responsibility to achieve, get those good grades and excel in our endeavors.  When we succeeded or failed, we became labeled by our outcome.  Realize that for many people, those labels had an impact on their mindset and followed them as they grew into adulthood.  If we fail, we do not want to fail again, while if we succeed, it has to be only our doing.  Coupled with a mindset of “It is up to me if it was meant to be,” we fall into doing things by ourselves.  For a company to grow, this mindset makes it difficult to move beyond a one-man operation or grow from a “Mom and Pop” shop.

 I have been working with teams for most of my working career.  The good thing about a team is that by working together, each having our own responsibilities, we can achieve more together than we would be able to do on our own.  This is a different mindset than laid out in the previous paragraph.  Have I ever worked with a team where there is someone with the “I can do this by myself” mindset?  Of course, and this can cause the team to not work together, demoralize the group and fall short of the goals.  In this example, the members of the team need to realize that roles have been delegated to the resource that the manager feels can best accomplish each of the tasks.

Related question – have I ever worked for someone who did not understand delegation?  Of course. In this example, the manager hogs all of the tasks and needs to remember that the roles delegated need to be done by the resource assigned.  This also has a huge impact on the development of the team members; By delegating and supporting each person, you empower them to think for themselves, allow for internal creativity to occur and build confidence in your teams.

Like so many of the things that we do, yes, this is a lot of work and something emerging managers need to remember and strive to get better at.  Delegating responsibilities to others is not an easy thing to do and is something that one has to learn to be comfortable doing. 

And the Band Played On…

 It has been weeks…OK, it has been months since the full band has gotten together and played.  Yes, we each still play on our own to keep our fingers nimble, but to play as the whole group, now that is something special!  A bunch of middle-aged guys jamming in a basement?  Yup, that would be us, and we still work on new songs, figure out ways to play through difficult sections and most importantly, we play off each other.  What does that mean?  In the style we play, jamming can be more like a conversation, where we might start off talking about something, flow into some other area and then bring it back together.  This mean a bunch of improvising, where it is important to be able to play, but more so to listen and follow each other.  A great analogy for any group or team activity.

A project team, a committee or a sports team all have to be aware of each of the individual members and have to work together.  Just like each of these examples, in the band we do not have “positions” or “titles,” but we do have roles to play so that we do not step on each other’s toes and can complement each other’s talents.  There is the old saying, “G-d gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.”  The key to playing in a group is the ability to listen and hear what each part is playing so that you know where everyone is going and can add value in a musical sense.  Any team or group working together has to have similar dynamics.  While in music, a discordant chard can signal an issue, in most team activities, the outcomes can fall short of expectations if everyone is not paying attention.

As with any activity where time has passed, there is some re-acquaintance that has to occur.  Whether playing or working with new people, there is always a getting to know you period.  Same when there are gaps in playing together.  We have often had reunion jams, where we play the songs that we are comfortable with and then venture off.  Like any team, it takes a bit of time to feel each other out and synch up with each other.  However, once that magical moment occurs, things begin to hit their groove and away we go.  Yes, it takes work and time to get to that point.  It is well worth the time and effort, for when we are all moving together, the magic occurs and wonder music happens.  As you can tell, I am looking forward to the reunion jam and, along with all related group activities, the wonderous outputs that we can produce.

The Importance of A Team

Somewhere in life, someone once said to me, “You need to downplay your strengths and develop your weaknesses.”  I was young at the time and took this as sage advice.  Of course, striving to develop a weakness into a strength made sense, but I was unclear about downplaying what I was good at.  If I was a solitary individual, reliant only upon myself, then yes, working on improving not so good skill sets would be appropriate for survival.  Last I checked, I am no Henry Bemis (from the episode Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last”), so I am surrounded in an active world filled with able people.

Based on years of grappling with this, if I have a strength in some area, I should work towards honing that skill set.  I know that there is always someone better in that area; however, within our subject matter expertise there is always room for improvement.  For some of the weaknesses…I think that I might not want to spend valuable time on something I might never become proficient in.  Using music as an example, I chose to teach myself the banjo.  I already know how to play guitar (rhythm not lead), so I have some knowledge / familiarity with that type of instrument.  If I decided to play euphonium, that would be a big challenge, as I do not currently know valve-based brass instruments.

If we can build on our strengths, how can we overcome our (real or perceived) weaknesses?  Let us now enter the concept of working in a team, where one person does not have to have ALL the answers, nor need to constantly attempt to learn things that are beyond their abilities (not to be confused with stepping outside one’s comfort zone).  With the right team in place, each member can leverage each other’s abilities, compliment skill sets, and provide a broader based team to tackle most obstacles.  While we know the names of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, etc., the truth was that these iconic leaders surrounded themselves with people who had the abilities that they did not.  Henry Ford is attributed with making the statement, "I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent people."

I have been in Project Management for about 20 years.  I have had the opportunity to work with programmers, implementation experts, application specialists, and people with business area expertise.  While my background is Accounting, it was important to learn other related areas of business and technology.  By working in a team, with people who have various skill sets, I have been part of successful teams, both providing my skills and learning others.  Not to dissimilar from playing in a band.  The guys I play with play different instruments and have different, yet similar, backgrounds.  Together, by listening to each other and complimenting each other, we are able to produce something greater as a whole than as individuals.